Poe-tay-toe Poe-tah-toe by Jadoina
by BotheredContest
Summary: Acting and real life feel more than a little interchangeable. A gender-swapped play or a decade long ménage à trois. Not sure which is crazier.


**Pairing: Bella/Demetri/Edward**

**Rating: T**

**Word Count: 2102**

**Disclaimer: All things Twilight is the sole property of Stephenie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.**

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**Poe-tay-toe/Poe-tah-toe**

"Hack, thou say-it unto me," Demetri said clearly, staring at me.

"CUT!" Caius shouted from his perch in the stands.

Demetri rolled his eyes as he mouthed to me, 'I'm going to kill you later for this,' before he turned towards Caius.

I snorted.

"What did I do wrong _this time_? Oh, great directorness." His sarcasm was so scathing that I half expected Caius to burst into flame.

"You are still not saying the line right. First, it's _hark_, not hack. Second, it's _sayeth_, not say-it."

"You say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe." Demetri rolled his eyes.

"No. NO. NO!" Caius stomped his foot and then looked at me. "Bella. Show him how it's done."

It was my turn to roll my eyes, but I followed his instructions, pitching my voice to properly capture the words that weren't meant to be said by a woman. "Hark! Thou sayeth unto me, for in thine blood is thine divine right."

There was a moment of complete silence, and then Caius clapped loudly. "Yes. Like that. Like that."

"Of course, the slut can do no wrong according to him." Rosalie was far enough away, standing behind the curtain on the right side of the stage, that if she'd muttered it, or even just said it in a normal voice, I wouldn't have heard it. But she'd obviously wanted me to hear it.

I turned toward her, narrowing my eyes. "Fuck you, Rose."

She looked me up and down, her eyes shrewd in a way that made me want to cross my arms stubbornly over my breasts.

"No thanks. I don't do whores," she finally said.

If she were closer, I'd have hauled off on her.

Instead, I contemplated about grabbing one of the rings that were in the petticoat so I could march over and wallop her without tripping on the eighty pounds of skirt.

"Enough!" Caius exclaimed before I could make up my mind as to what, precisely, I was going to do.

I immediately focused back on him. After all, Rosalie wasn't important. She was jealous over the fact that I got the role of Draca while she had been cast in the crap role of Joan Harker. The fact that she hadn't been able to keep her claws in my big brother only made her all the more upset.

But the reality was that Emmett had left her because, of the two of us, she was the real slut. I was in a ménage à trois, but even so, I was faithful to Demetri and Edward. Rosalie, on the other hand, tended to chase any guy that moved and didn't know how to keep her legs shut.

Still, until Emmett had tired of her bullshit, she and I had been – mostly – getting along.

"Do you understand how to say it correctly now, Demetri, or do you need another demonstration?" Caius asked, looking to him.

'Please say it the right way,' I mouthed to him as he looked at me. I knew he _could_ say it the correct way, he had a degree in literacy and had won awards for his enunciation skills. Which meant he was just being an asshole.

Of course, I knew why.

Unlike Edward and I, Demetri wasn't an actor. He wasn't a fan of the stage.

But our ten-year relationship had hit some hard times about two years ago, and after almost an entire year of trying to ignore it, we ended up in 'couples' therapy – the irony that there was three of us and not just two wasn't lost on me.

Our therapist, Dr. Banner, had recommended that Demetri and Edward fill each other's' shoes, metaphorically speaking. So Edward had gone out and gotten a traditional day job while Demetri had auditioned for a roll in the play, Countess Draca.

I'd been more floored than he had when he'd successfully gotten the role of Mischa Murray – the largest role in the play with the exception of mine.

I'd figured he might get one of the roles of the Weird Brothers or Renfield... maybe even Luke Westenra. But I just didn't get how he'd managed to successfully get the role that he did.

But he had, and now he was being his normal lazy self rather than taking the position seriously.

I wasn't exactly surprised, but his lackluster attitude was pissing me off.

Then again, he could afford to be lazy... The only thing uncomfortable that he was wearing were tights, whereas I was wearing almost a hundred pounds of crushed velvet, a corset, and a petticoat.

Caius was one of the only directors I'd ever worked with that required people to wear their costumes from day one of rehearsal. And after four weeks of wearing the same dress for eight hours a day, I was sick of it.

And we weren't even to the actual show yet.

Of course, the show would be a relief after all the hours of practice.

I had to make it through the final two weeks of rehearsals first, though... Preferably without killing Demetri.

I suspected Edward would be a little sore if I ended up locked up for murder.

Demetri rolled his eyes but then proceeded to say the line with perfect diction.

…

"Hark." Demetri snorted. "Who the hell says hark anymore, anyway?"

I pulled my sunglasses down my nose enough to look at him over the top as I turned my head enough to face him. "The play is set in the eighteen hundreds."

"Then who the hell said it in the eighteen freaking hundreds!"

I immediately faced the windshield again but was unable to stop the grin.

"Hark, the herald angels sing. Glory to thy newborn King," I half-sung the words, half murmured them.

"That was written in the eighteenth century, not the eighteen hundreds!"

"Poe-tay-toe/poe-tah-toe."

I started up the engine to my classic 1953 Chevy Pickup, and it roared to life loudly enough that Demetri jumped in his seat.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye as he opened his mouth. "Don't start, Demetri. I know you don't get my love for this vehicle, but it's basically the only thing my dad ever gave me." Well it and a digital camera that had been obsolete even when he'd given it to me.

Demetri's mouth closed without saying what I was quite certain he was thinking.

But Demetri had wanted for nothing growing up, much like Edward. They weren't like my siblings and me.

My big bro, who I'd followed to Los Angeles after I'd finished highschool, had been raised by my dad in Washington. But my baby sister and I had grown up with our mom, moving every three months or so from the time I was two – Alice hadn't even been born until almost six months after mom had left dad.

I didn't move in with my dad until I was eighteen and just starting my senior year of high school – by then Emmett had lived in California for almost five years.

The drive home was relatively quiet as Demetri could go indefinitely without talking. So could I, for that matter. But for me, it was more about comfort, whereas for him it was simple laziness.

When we got home, he practically flowed out of the vehicle, leaving me to get out on my own.

Apparently, chivalry _was_ dead. Not that I needed him to open my door for me.

Though, every once in awhile, I wondered what I saw in him.

I knew why I loved Edward, he and I were two peas in a pod, but Demetri and I were a different thing altogether. We were hot and cold, and by hot and cold. I meant that I was hot... Demetri was sub-zero.

I entered the house a little behind Demetri, and the fact that we weren't immediately greeted by Edward told me he was probably still at work, or possibly asleep in the bedroom, though I doubted the latter.

Demetri seemed to reach the same conclusion that I did because he said, "I think we're alone, this feels suspiciously familiar."

I knew what he meant, but I refused to jump to that conclusion. "I'm sure he's just running late."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Yes."

"Really?" he asked, his voice full of scorn.

I stepped over to him, reaching up and placing my hand against his cheek. "Really. It's been two years since Tanya, and he's given us no reason to distrust him."

He jerked away from me, stepping backward. "Two years since he cheated, you mean."

I sighed. "We've been over this again and again. He didn't cheat, we were all in an open relationship."

He opened his mouth, and for a moment I was worried we were going to have the same argument for the tenth hundredth time, but after a moment he just blew out some air as his shoulders sort of deflated. "My fault," he muttered.

"It was no one's fault. We just..." I trailed off then shrugged before continuing, "Just didn't know it would ever come up."

He shook his head but didn't say anything else.

But I got it, old arguments died hard. And when it was still a hot topic in counseling, it didn't really help.

I couldn't help but wonder if we wouldn't have been better off to have continued ignoring the problem rather than facing it the way we were.

"I'm going to go to take a shower," I decided aloud after a minute of neither of us speaking, and turned to head toward the bedroom.

"Okay, I'll be in the kitchen putting together something for dinner. Maybe I'll use the lemons we've got to make actual lemonade... or lemon tarts with vanilla cream."

I paused briefly as I snorted because I knew there wasn't anything vanilla about him, but continued to the bathroom without any comment.

It only took a couple of minutes for me to enter the shower after stripping off my clothes – not the costume I'd been wearing on stage, as that took two people to get me into and out of.

The water beat into my skin with a rhythmic pattern as I leaned my head against the wall of the shower, closing my eyes so I could shut the world out.

The knock on the glass shower door startled me so much that I let out a surprised shriek, before I managed to turn around to see Edward on the other side of the door.

'Want some company?' I was relatively sure he was speaking, but the shower was loud enough that I couldn't hear his words and wouldn't have known what he was saying if I hadn't been looking at him.

"Sure," I replied

He practically shimmied out of his clothes before he slid the glass door opened and stepped in.

"How'd rehearsals go for you two, today?" He found the shampoo and poured some into his hand just before he started to wash my hair for me.

"Demetri keeps on insisting that hark is hack."

"Well, poe-tay-toe/poe-tah-toe."

"I think Caius would like to kill him over it... Actually, in all honesty, if we weren't only a couple of weeks out from the start of the show, I think he'd fire him."

Edward grinned "I still can't believe he got the role that he did."

"Neither can..." I closed my eyes and barely suppressed a moan as he massaged my scalp. "I"

"Demetri seemed upset when I got home. What's going on?" He tipped my head back ever so slightly so as to get the shampoo out of my hair.

"He had a moment of insecurity earlier, that's all."

"I**'**m not going to ask what about, because I'm pretty sure I'd get it right on my first try. Though, sometimes I wonder if he'll ever forgive me."

"I don't think forgiveness is the problem, Edward." I looked seriously into his eyes. "We both know how sorry you are. We've both forgiven you. But I think it's trust that he struggles with."

He looked away, but not before I saw the sheen in his eyes.

I reached out and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me again. "We're finding our way through this, and it will get better. Now, I want that look gone from your eyes, so kiss me."

He smiled slightly before leaning down and kissing me.


End file.
